The present invention describes systems and methods for processing and transferring multimedia data between nodes in a communication system, e.g., an interactive television system, usable to create, for example, sophisticated entertainment user interfaces in the home.
Technologies associated with the communication of information have evolved rapidly over the last several decades. Television, cellular telephony, the Internet and optical communication techniques (to name just a few things) combine to inundate consumers with available information and entertainment options. Taking television as an example, the last three decades have seen the introduction of cable television service, satellite television service, pay-per-view movies and video-on-demand. Whereas television viewers of the 1960s could typically receive perhaps four or five over-the-air TV channels on their television sets, today's TV watchers have the opportunity to select from hundreds and potentially thousands of channels of shows and information. Video-on-demand technology, currently used primarily in hotels and the like, provides the potential for in-home entertainment selection from among thousands of movie titles. Digital video recording (DVR) equipment such as offered by TiVo, Inc., 2160 Gold Street, Alviso, Calif. 95002, further expand the available choices.
The technological ability to provide so much information and content to end users provides both opportunities and challenges to system designers and service providers. One challenge is that while end users typically prefer having more choices rather than fewer, this preference is counterweighted by their desire that the selection process be both fast and simple. Unfortunately, the development of the systems and interfaces by which end users access media items has resulted in selection processes which are neither fast nor simple. Consider again the example of television programs. When television was in its infancy, determining which program to watch was a relatively simple process primarily due to the small number of choices. One would consult a printed guide which was formatted, for example, as series of columns and rows which showed the correspondence between (1) nearby television channels, (2) programs being transmitted on those channels and (3) date and time. The television was tuned to the desired channel by adjusting a tuner knob and the viewer watched the selected program. Later, remote control devices were introduced that permitted viewers to tune the television from a distance. This addition to the user-television interface created the phenomenon known as “channel surfing” whereby a viewer could rapidly view short segments being broadcast on a number of channels to quickly learn what programs were available at any given time.
Despite the fact that the number of channels and amount of viewable content has dramatically increased, the generally available user interface and control device options and frameworks for televisions have not changed much over the last 30 years. Printed guides are still the most prevalent mechanism for conveying programming information. The multiple button remote control with simple up and down arrows is still the most prevalent channel/content selection mechanism. The reaction of those who design and implement the TV user interface to the increase in available media content has been a straightforward extension of the existing selection procedures and interface objects. Thus, the number of rows and columns in the printed guides has been increased to accommodate more channels. The number of buttons on the remote control devices has been increased to support additional functionality and content handling. However, this approach has significantly increased both the time required for a viewer to review the available information and the complexity of actions required to implement a selection. Arguably, the cumbersome nature of the existing interface has hampered commercial implementation of some services, e.g., video-on-demand, since consumers are resistant to new services that will add complexity to an interface that they view as already too slow and complex.
An exemplary control framework having a zoomable graphical user interface for organizing, selecting and launching media items is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/768,432, filed on Jan. 30, 2004 to Frank A. Hunleth, the disclosure of which is incorporated here by reference. This framework provides exemplary solutions to the afore-described problems of conventional interfaces. Among other things, such exemplary frameworks provide mechanisms which display metadata associated with media items available for selection by a user in a manner which is easy-to-use, but allows a large number of different media items to be accessible. One feature of exemplary frameworks described in this patent application is the use of zooming to provide, among other things, visually informative transitions between different semantic levels of media objects displayed by the interface and as a mechanism for highlighting objects currently being considered by a user.
The implementation of these types of advanced user interfaces is complicated by the system architectures and communication nodes involved in the processing and transport of data used to generate these interfaces from various sources to an end user's device, e.g., a television. As will be described in more detail below, this data includes so-called metadata that describes the media content. The term “metadata” as it is used herein refers to all of the supplementary information that describes the particular content of interest associated with media items available for selection by a user. As an example for movie objects, the metadata could include, e.g., the title, description, genre, cast, DVD cover art, price/availability, cast bios and filmographies, links to similar movies, critical reviews, user reviews, the rights associated with the metadata itself, rights associated with the content, advertising metadata linked to the content of interest, etc. An exemplary system for capturing, processing, synthesizing and forwarding metadata suitable for such advanced user interfaces is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/037,897 entitled “A Metadata Brokering Server and Method”, filed on Jan. 18, 2005, the disclosure of which is incorporated here by reference.
Once captured and processed, however, the data needs to be communicated from, for example, a head-end portion of the system to, for example, a set-top box in a manner which enables sufficient data to be supplied to render rich user interfaces, while at the same time being sensitive to time delay and operating within the constraints imposed by legacy hardware. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide architectures and methods which resolve these conflicting parameters and enable advanced user interfaces to be generated.